Partnership fosters care collaboration for the benefit of behavioral health patients and those struggling with substance use disorder; promotes workplace safety for caregivers

, December 13, 2018—Salt Lake City, Utah —December 13, 2018—Collective Medical, delivering the nation’s largest and most effective network for care collaboration, today announced a partnership with the South Carolina Hospital Association (SCHA) and an endorsement by SCHA Solutions—a division of SCHA. This partnership provides care teams in South Carolina with access to the Collective Network™, providing the tools needed to identify and better support behavioral health patients, including those with substance use disorder, in the emergency department (ED). In addition to supporting care collaboration across care teams, the partnership will help hospitals prioritize workplace safety for providers.

Collective is currently partnered with nearly 20 state hospital associations. Collective’s real-time, risk-adjusted event notification and care collaboration platform serves all points of care and supports care teams across emergent, inpatient, post-acute, mental and behavioral, and ambulatory settings, as well as stakeholders in ACOs and health plans.

44 million U.S. adults experience mental illness per year, and the need for mental health professionals cannot be met by the current supply. The behavioral health crisis is particularly challenging in South Carolina where nearly 10 percent of the population struggles with unmet substance use disorder and other mental health needs. Coupled with the shortage of psychiatrists and the rise of undiagnosed and untreated behavioral health patients, patients are left waiting in the ED until they’re able to be seen by a behavioral health provider and moved to an appropriate care setting.

The shortage of behavioral health specialists, lack of psychiatric services in the ED, and care silos are all contributing factors to the escalating mental health crisis. The Collective Network removes these care silos by connecting hospitals to other care teams in South Carolina and across the country. When an at-risk patient presents to the ED, the Collective Platform pushes a real-time notification to ED physicians with insights into the patient’s medical history—which may include care recommendations from community and behavioral health providers.

“We’re dedicated to supporting our 100 member hospitals and health systems as they improve the quality and safety of patient care,” says Thornton Kirby, FACHE, President and CEO of SCHA. “Our partnership with Collective is a testament to that dedication. The solution has been supporting the integration of behavioral and physical health in states like Washington, Oregon and California for several years and we’re excited to see how it can impact patient outcomes in South Carolina.”

Kirby adds, “Workplace safety and security is a huge priority for SCHA, and we’re excited to provide our members with a tool to protect themselves and their patients.”

In a recent poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians, almost half of polled emergency physicians reported being physically assaulted at work. Similarly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates that 75 percent of the 25,000 workplace assaults that occur annually happen in healthcare and social services settings. These incidents are typically under-reported.

The Collective Network offers facilities a way to record and share security and safety events for the protection of care teams and patients. EDs can document when a patient poses a safety threat to staff, care providers, other patients in the ED, or themselves.

Collective is currently implemented in 20 states and is proven to significantly impact the opioid epidemic. For example, Collective provides the technical support for Washington State’s “ER is for Emergencies” program. Washington has seen a 24 percent reduction in opioid prescriptions coming out of the ED since the launch of the program. Likewise, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center uses the Collective Platform in combination with statewide prescribing guidelines. This combination resulted in a 61 percent reduction in opioid scripts written between 2015 to 2017 and a 47 percent reduction in opioids given in the ED.

“We’re honored to partner with SCHA and its members dedicated to fixing the glaring cracks in our healthcare system,” says Chris Klomp, CEO of Collective Medical. “We’re so pleased to collaborate with South Carolina hospitals as they prioritize care coordination as a means to not only deliver better patient care, but to likewise make the emergency department a safer place for caregivers.”

Collective is endorsed as a best practice for emergency medicine by the American College of Emergency Physicians and has been recognized by Inc. Magazine and by the MountainWest Capital Network as one of Utah’s fastest growing companies.

Collective Medical empowers care teams to improve patient outcomes by closing the communication gaps that undermine patient care. With a nationwide network engaged with every national health plan in the country, hundreds of hospitals and health systems, and tens of thousands of providers, Collective’s system-agnostic platform is trusted by care teams to identify at-risk and complex patients and facilitate actionable collaboration to make better care decisions and improve outcomes. Based in Salt Lake City, Collective is proven to streamline transitions of care, improve coordination across diverse care teams, and reduce medically unnecessary hospital admissions. Learn more at www.collectivemedical.com and Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

ABOUT THE SOUTH CAROLINA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION

South Carolina Hospital Association is a private, not-for-profit organization made up of some 100-member hospitals and health systems and about 900 personal members associated with our institutional members. The South Carolina Hospital Association was created in 1921 to serve as the collective voice of the state’s hospital community. The Association is proud to be a part of the state’s hospital industry, adding value to efforts to care for the people of South Carolina. By helping to keep South Carolina’s hospitals healthy, we are helping to keep our state healthy.